Apple and Intel one step forward one step backward 64-32-64.

I am perplexed by Apple's choice of CPU from Intel. Sure the new chip offers more preformance, at lower levels of power consumption, but it is only 32bit. The G5 was a 64 bit chip and OSX supported 64/32 bit computing.

The Core Duo that Apple is currently selling is based on Yonah which only offers 32 bit computing.

When Merom is released it will have the EM64T extensions and Apple will be offering these processors in their computers as they become available, thus returning to 64bit.

Has anyone noticed this :?: Apple went from 64 bit, back to 32 bit, and will be returning to 64 bit shortly :!:

What will happen to the consumers that purchase Macs with the Core processors in this limited 6-9 month offering of a 32 bit chip?

The reversal of the iMac from 64-bit to 32-bit was probably the reason why the performance improvements of the Core Duo weren't very impressive. Apple probably determined that there was greater benefit from multithreading than 64-bit at this time.

In any case, what really needed an update badly was the G4 chips used in the PowerBook and the iBooks. The G4 didn't support 64-bit and was extremely bandwidth limited. The increase in FSB, 4 times I believe, and the second core will go a long way toward increasing its performance. I doubt it will be as high as the 4 times that Apple claims, but a two fold increase is likely.

The 64-32-64 issue only affects the iMacs since only they had the G5 and now use Core Duo. The issue is only really important in the G5 towers since that's where performance is critical and 64-bit support is probably more prevalent for the types of programs those towers would use. I haven't heard any plans to switch the G5 towers to Core Duo, so Apple appears to be waiting for Conroe. The 64-bit problem will then be avoided where it is most critical.

Even now in the Yonah era, theres like no 64-bit software you can actually do some really nice stuff with, not to mention in the G5 era. So walking "back" didnt really hurt Apple.

Yes, the Mac OS is 64-bit capable. Unix has been capable of using 64-bit processors for quite a while now (eg Sun UltraSparc), and Mac is unix based. Linux also has full 64-bit versions of the kernel available. And there are som true 64-bit applications out there, they're just not mainstream consumer. The heavy low/no graphics number-crunching type programs are often available in a version optimized for 64-bit computing. But office, internet, gaming? 64-bit doesn't make much difference - yet! (I'll probably get flamed by some fans of a particular 64-bit version of a particular game, but oh well, jmho).